How did our recent bout of Wokeness arise? In the first two decades of the 21st century, the number of people with a bachelor’s degree increased by 22 million. But the number of jobs requiring a college education only increased by 10 million.The recession arising from the financial crisis of 2008 was the breaking point. Suddenly, there was also a surge in the number of people seeking jobs in law, government, journalism, and academia, while the number of jobs in all those areas was nowhere near high enough to meet the new supply of workers. People who wanted jobs in the symbolic capitalist realm were incurring large amounts of debt with lower prospects for lucrative employment.
The opening salvo of the modern Woke Movement was Occupy Wall Street, five years before Trump was elected. Recall that the complaint was about “the top one percent” of wealth, thus conveniently lumping together someone who aspired to be at the 95th percentile and someone at the 5th percentile as being equally disadvantaged.
Hartley paraphrases al-Gharbi's view of our recent past.
What everyone perceived as Leftism run amok was really just a bunch of elite white liberals trying to amass power in cushy jobs where they can wield words and accusations to gain even more wealth and influence.
Trump's reelection was a repudiation of their failed attempt. I would add, not all of those trying to board the "symbolic capitalist" gravy train were white. Many DEI hires were BIPOC, hired as "window dressing." Hat tip to RealClearPolicy for the link.
